He Rested Until
Two O'clock, When He Ate Some Food.
Thereafter he repaired to the Tomb,
and in that ruined shrine, amid the wreckage of the shell-fire,
the defeated sovereign appealed to the spirit of Mohammed Ahmed to help him
in his sore distress.
It was the last prayer ever offered over the Mahdi's
grave. The celestial counsels seem to have been in accord with the dictates
of common-sense, and at four o'clock the Khalifa, hearing that the Sirdar
was already entering the city, and that the English cavalry were on the
parade ground to the west, mounted a small donkey, and, accompanied by his
principal wife, a Greek nun as a hostage, and a few attendants, rode
leisurely off towards the south. Eight miles from Omdurman a score of swift
camels awaited him, and on these he soon reached the main body of his
routed army. Here he found many disheartened friends; but the fact that,
in this evil plight, he found any friends at all must be recorded in his
favour and in that of his subjects. When he arrived he had no escort -
was, indeed, unarmed. The fugitives had good reason to be savage.
Their leaders had led them only to their ruin. To cut the throat of this
one man who was the cause of all their sufferings was as easy as they would
have thought it innocent. Yet none assailed him. The tyrant, the oppressor,
the scourge of the Soudan, the hypocrite, the abominated Khalifa;
the embodiment, as he has been depicted to European eyes, of all the vices;
the object, as he was believed in England, of his people's bitter hatred,
found safety and welcome among his flying soldiers.
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